Curious (read nosy) about your kiddo #1 switch to public school. Why did you decide to switch? What do you miss about private? What are you happy about with public (I remember you already mentioned aftercare / extracurriculars being much more extensive).

The main reason we switched DC1 when we did was because we were going to Paradise for a year and private school would be 40K instead of 8K PLUS the public schools are really good in Paradise. But when we came back, we kept DC1 in public school instead of coming back to private. The main reason for that is, like you say, our public schools have a lot more options starting in middle school. (The after-care was more extensive in Paradise, but isn’t so much here unless you’re into sports, which DC1 is not.)

So, we mainly remained switched when we came back so DC1 could take an instrument and advanced-level math and because DC1 is a lot older now and can (mostly) handle the larger classes etc. Zie has had a good year after some initial growing pains and has friends etc.

I do still miss the smaller class sizes and knowing everything that was going on at school. DC1 probably wouldn’t have fallen quite as far behind in the second to last grading period before we noticed at private school (I can’t remember if I mentioned hir series of forgetting to bring homework home or to turn completed homework in), but I don’t know. I also miss Spanish and French (and zie would be starting Latin if zie had remained). And I miss a bit the college level science they were doing because the science teachers they hired had only taught university courses before.

With public we’re happy about… orchestra and math. We’re unhappy with writing and science. We’re meh on social studies, PE, and study hall. Next year zie will have Spanish and fortunately the teacher that everybody said was terrible has moved on, so there will be a new person teaching that course. Zie will also have Robotics, but the class is supposed to be pretty bad since the person teaching it doesn’t understand programming. DH may step in there. We also really like that there is a bus (DC1’s stop is literally on our house corner, DC2’s will be across the street). In paradise we liked that DC1 could walk/bike to and from school.

DC2 is also starting in public next year instead of private because zie got into the Dual-Language program. The reason we’re doing dual-language for DC2 but didn’t for DC1 is that, unlike DC1, DC2 didn’t need to start K early, partly because zie is 6 months offset from DC1 (hir birthday is right before the cutoff) and partly because hir Montessori has higher-level materials than DC1’s did at this age so zie hasn’t run out. If zie hadn’t gotten into dual-language we would have gone straight to 1st with DC2 and skipped K entirely. (That’s not an option in the dual-language program. But zie will be able to test out of a grade in the future if need be.) I’m concerned about class size, lack of attention from the teachers, lack of differentiation, bullying, etc. etc. etc. But we take things one year at a time.

Moving forward, I will also be concerned about the required state legislature disinformation. DC1 doesn’t bring textbooks home, but I know that the state uses TX-standard textbooks, which means they are full of information that is biased in ways that do not fit with our family values. (Unlike the CA-standard textbooks we grew up with! Those are biased in ways that do fit with our family values.) So we’ll have to provide information on evolution and the Holocaust etc. DC1’s social studies teacher this year was a bit of a hippie and probably skirted the line closer to love and understanding of different cultures and religions than what our state legislature wants and hopefully did not get in trouble for it. Sadly, the class was mostly crafts and not a whole lot of actual academics. The science teacher was not that great, but not biased about it. So maybe this worry is overblown in our blue-dot college town. It would be easier if the school’s indoctrination matched our values rather than being in opposition to them, but there may be benefits there to critical thinking and not kow-towing to authority, even though authority is so highly stressed in this hierarchical former plantation state.

I will give them a lot of books and force critical thinking skills at home!

Once our mortgage is done again, we’ll swap that out with a 529 auto deposit option that comes out of both paychecks….which brings me to another question…Should we funnel a ton now into older kid and worry about younger kid later (he’s 4 years younger) or should we fund both at the same time now? I’m assuming we can roll over older kid’s excess into younger kid if we over deposit but then if we die before kids do, an uneven distribution would screw things up for kid 2. Not sure what to do yet.

I have also spent some time thinking about this. I am not sure it actually matters that much.

Yes, if you have too much money for kid #1, you can easily transfer the leftover amount to the second child. (An added wrinkle–if you undersave for DC1, will you take from DC2’s account? You can, but would you be willing to?)

A quick check on the internet suggests that the 529 does not automatically go to the child who is named on its behalf– you can name a beneficiary. It is also something that you can talk about with an attorney for a trust if you do not have a successor that you trust not to just liquidate it at a loss.

We have target-date accounts for our children in their 529s, so it makes sense in terms of risk to fund them separately. That means DC1’s account has less risk in it right now (a larger bond to stock ratio) than DC2’s does because DC1 is closer to college. But I’m thinking of them as separate buckets and we’re aiming to fully fund 4 years at a private school given that we’re not expecting much financial aid.

If you’re not thinking of them as separate buckets, then you might want to think of it as if you are going to “retire” and you know you’re going to be alive for 8 years after “retirement” and then suddenly “die” (if you’re planning on funding post-college education, or your DCs might take more than 4 years to graduate, then you might want to add some years to that). What kind of investment portfolio would be optimal in that scenario? It’s going to depend on your risk aversion, but you probably could pick a single fund that would fit your risk preferences given that scenario.

In terms of how we’re funding, I don’t actually think that our method of putting in $X/month to each child’s fund is necessarily optimal. It would make better sense while we have excess cash to put in lump sums right now and stop contributing later (allowing for more tax preferred earnings). But $X/month/kid is predictable and is easy to fiddle with should our situation change.

The important thing that gets brought up in the comments when we talk about this kind of situation is the perceived fairness of the situation by the kids. Pick some rule that seems fair for both kids and stick to it. If you have to make adjustments, make sure that you adjust for the other kid as well. For us, we’ve decided that fully funding tuition without loans is what we consider fair, so we will be ignoring the actual costs and financial aid for the schools. Our kids will get college paid for by us no matter what college they choose. Other people choose a specific dollar amount (though I hope they adjust it for inflation!), or may have a rule like, “we will pay up to the cost of state school X”. What you don’t want to do is pay full freight for one kid and force the other to take out loans for the full amount because that can lead to them writing about how you don’t love them on money forums, and nobody wants that.

Grumpeteers– How do you think First Gen should save for two kids’ college?

We got DC1’s standardized test scores and zie had only gotten an 83% in 7th grade math (DC1 is currently in 6th grade, but because zie is in 7th grade math, zie took the 7th grade standardized math test). This wouldn’t be a big deal, except one of their online pieces of material says that kids need at least 90% on the 7th grade standardized test to get into Algebra Honors (along with some other requirements that DC1 has), and if they don’t have that then they go into regular Algebra. Also, Algebra will show up on their high school transcript and be included in their high school GPA no matter when they take it.

On top of that, we just found out that there was an advanced 6th grade Language Arts class that we’d had no idea about when we moved back from paradise. DC1 has been in regular Language Arts which might partly explain why zie has been learning so little and never had homework. Plus the last two grading periods (out of 10 grading periods), DC1’s Language Arts grades dropped just below 90 because zie had a brief period of time where zie was completely disorganized and had been having trouble getting things to the places they needed to be (this also showed up for one grading period in math and would have shown up in Orchestra except the teachers emailed us before it became a big enough problem to affect hir grade). The problem here is that the online sheet talking about tracking into 7th grade basically said if you were in 6th grade advanced, then you’d be in 7th and if you were in 7th, then you would be in 8th.

So I freaked out and started worrying about the perils of acceleration potentially keeping my child from excelling later on (something I have never worried about before with DC1 because we’ve never had cause to worry– and in hir defense, at 10 zie is no more disorganized than most 12 year olds). DH contacted the counselor to set up an appointment and he called back while we were out for a walk.

It turns out that all 6th graders in 7th grade advanced math get moved up to Algebra Honors regardless of their standardized test scores. The requirement list is only for students going to Algebra in 8th grade or later. Whew.

And the counselor looked at DC1’s transcript and said if those last two grading periods had been higher DC1 would have automatically been moved up to advanced 7th grade Language Arts, but since they were below 90, the automatic move wasn’t tripped. (Though if zie had had those grades in advanced 6th grade Language Arts, then zie would have stayed in the advanced Language Arts track.) He asked why DC1 wasn’t in 6th grade advanced Language Arts and DH said we’d moved back from out of state and we didn’t know to ask about it. So the counselor said that because DC1 is in the G/T program and has high grades in advanced 7th grade math and has As in all of hir other classes for all of the grading periods and had high standardized test scores for reading that putting hir in advanced 7th grade Language Arts should not be a problem at all, scheduling conflicts permitting. (Since DC1’s requested schedule probably looks identical to a bunch of other students with academically-minded parents, it probably won’t be a problem.)

So… no reason to freak out at all.

Still, I was not thinking that things DC1 did at age 10 could end up on hir permanent transcript! I hope Algebra goes well! The math teacher for the honors classes is supposed to be awesome, so that’s hopeful. Keyboarding and Spanish will also show up on the high school transcript. It’s a strange new world we live in.

What’s the moral? When you’re concerned about something, talk to the school! They’re there to help (usually). The other moral is that sometimes you have to ask about things you didn’t know you needed to ask about (like advanced classes… or the fact that there’s an online website where you can track your kids’ turned in home works that everyone else knew about because they were told in 5th grade).

And yes, I still think we made the right decision letting DC1 skip two grades. But we’re also taking it a year at a time.

I’m curious to know what you’d do in my situation. I live in the outer boroughs of NYC in a diverse, urban neighborhood with decent (but not great) public schools. My 5 year old got a spot in a dual language program (Spanish/ English) at our zoned school. He also tested very highly on the city gifted and talented test with minimal prep and got into an excellent program several neighborhoods away (he’d take a school bus to get there). There’s been a huge push in our neighborhood to convince educated, middle class families (like us) to keep their kids in the neighborhood schools. Many have historically sent their kids to charters, g&t programs, or private schools. We love the g&t program our kid has a spot in, but we also love our neighborhood and worry that we’re contributing to NYC’s problematic school segregation problems. What would you do in our place?

Right or wrong, I always put my kids ahead of general social spillovers. So I try to decide what is best for them first, and worry about the ripple effects as a secondary concern. Not that I ignore spillovers, but the spillovers would have to be larger than they are in this case and I would have to know for certain that the spillovers from removing my child from the district were negative.

What I mean by knowing for certain that they are negative– while we do know that having higher SES kids is good for schools (and having kids whose families have domestic violence is bad for schools) and many other network effects, the benefits to having gifted kids are not as clear-cut. That is, it isn’t always clear that keeping a gifted kid in a non-gifted school is actually better for the school. Gifted kids are special needs and as such tend to draw resources, act up if their intellectual needs aren’t being met, etc. The same isn’t true of kids who are high achieving but not gifted– they are more likely to provide positive spillovers. So most of the studies that find beneficial effects of, for example, cooperative learning, remove gifted kids from their experiments.

Still, worrying about neighborhood schools is still a really valid concern, and there are things you can do about that even if you don’t send your child there, *even if you don’t have kids*. Personally, I donate a lot of money to education-related charities. Donors Choose is a big favorite of mine. Using Donors Choose, I can also pick districts that have greater needs than the one we’re zoned in, which has even more positive effects than would donating to our relatively well-off district. Before I had children, I supported schools more than I do now because I had lots of time to volunteer and could tutor in low income urban districts.

All of this is an argument to say, take that spillover concern out of your calculus right now. If you’re worried about the school, there are ways you can have a bigger more positive impact than you would by sending your child there.

That doesn’t mean that you should automatically choose the G/T school, of course. There are lots of things to think about when making your decision that only you and your family can place weights on.

If you feel you’ve made a mistake with either choice, how easy it is to switch?

How do you feel about the administration and teaching at both schools? Do they seem willing to work with parents?

If you’ve visited the schools, do the kids seem happy and not acting up?

How will the school schedule work with your work-life? Are there after school programs? What happens if your child misses the bus or wants to do an after school activity?

How strongly do you feel about foreign language acquisition and are there other ways to get it?

How do you feel about the curriculum at both scohols?

If you love the G/T school I would be very tempted to stay with it. From folks I’ve talked with, dual-language is great for keeping GT kids occupied until 2nd or 3rd grade and then they start needing more acceleration. Hopefully that would not be a problem at the G/T school. On the other hand, the G/T schools in the city closest to us have a reputation for not actually being very good for G/T– their main purposes is for white parents to segregate their kids without paying 40K/year for private school, which means that they’re not actually geared towards G/T. That’s not true everywhere, and is probably not true in NYC given how competitive the testing is, but I don’t know for sure.

At school

The first suggestion is to ask the school for help. This will not always work– it is very school dependent. #2 and I grew up as tracking was going out of fashion and our parents had an extremely uphill battle trying to get the schools to make any accommodations. DH and I have not had as much trouble, although part of that stems from us so far avoiding working with the high SES K-4 schools that have refused to accommodate our friends’ children (we sent DC1 to private school and the dual language programs are not in the high SES zones). The private school we sent DC1 to tested and anticipated our needs and made suggestions to us for keeping DC1 engaged. The middle schools here have been very helpful when we’ve asked for help. One of the main suggestions when talking with schools is to avoid at all costs saying that your child is bored– instead say that the child needs more challenge.

What schools can do will vary on the district, the school, and sometimes even the teacher. We talk more about options with a few links to research and books in this post here.

Single-subject acceleration allows children to stay with their same peers but to spend part of the day, usually during Reading and/or Math in a classroom a year older. I did a lot of single-subject acceleration for math and/or reading when it was offered as a child (it varied by school and by year) and always enjoyed it. DC1 did single-subject acceleration in K, going to 1st for math and English and is currently doing single-subject acceleration for math, though because 30-40 other kids in his grade are doing it as well, there are only same-grade level kids in hir class.

Whole-grade acceleration, in which the child skips a full grade, is another option. DC1 has technically skipped two grades– zie entered K early, then did K and 1 at the same time, effectively skipping 1st grade.

Classroom differentiation is fantastic for students if teachers can pull it off. Teaching Gifted Kids in Today’s Classroom (an update from Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom) is a great resource for teachers. Great teachers can give the same project assignments but have some kids dig deeper than others. They can also do things like set up stations for independent learning at various times. For teachers who aren’t as comfortable with differentiating, you can still talk with the teacher and come up with things that your child can do if zie finishes tasks early. This could be something as simple as allowing the child to read a book of his or her choosing, or could include more complicated work. Often teachers have various kinds of fun logic puzzle worksheets they can give out as a first pass and today’s schools often have purchased software that can be used for individual learning. We talk about some options for additional work below.

Gifted pull-out is better than nothing. We’ve been less than impressed with it and the research is kind of meh on it. I assume how it is done is important– I like to think my students got something out of it when I did pull-out math for fourth graders (especially the lesson on adding in different bases!), but who knows.

Outside of school

Enrichment outside of school doesn’t do anything about the “bored at school” problem, but it can help after school and on weekends.

After school activities will vary by what’s in your area. These were great for us in paradise because they were held at school and effectively extended the school day allowing us to get more work done before DC1 got home. Where we live now, they require chauffeuring which is a pretty big drain on our time. Still, playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, doing a sport, art class, academic competition, and so on can allow a gifted child to experience challenges and growth that zie is lacking from school, especially if allowed to learn at hir own pace. Challenges are especially important for gifted kids so that when they hit an academic wall for the first time they don’t give up. Classes like robotics, drama, math circle, etc. can also be fun. Some tutoring programs will also have programs for gifted kids or on topics not taught at school.

At home

Workbooks

At the #1 household, we are big fans of workbooks. My sister and I grew up doing workbooks and I learned a lot from them. DC1 has been doing them since zie was 3 (mostly on the weekends and holiday breaks) because zie desperately needed at least an hour of mental stimulation (along with at least an hour of exercise) or zie would be literally bouncing off walls.

There are a couple of directions you can go with workbooks. First, you can accelerate– introduce knowledge that won’t be introduced until later that year or in future years. Acceleration is especially useful (in my opinion) for mastering basic materials that are the building blocks of more complicated learning (phonics, addition, etc.) and for when you’re not sure that your student will be getting foundational material in school (because of grade skipping, school absences, poor teaching, or changing school districts).

I strongly believe that learning math different ways is important. So we can cover the same basic material and will do it traditionally in school and in the Brainquest workbook, but will do it from another direction using the Singapore math books (Singapore math link not an affiliate link– they’re not really available on Amazon). If your school uses Singapore math, then you could instead supplement with more traditional US math. Again, DC1 went through K-8 in Singapore math and DC2 is currently on grade 2A. The material is the same for each grade, following essentially the common core, but the methods and what is emphasized in the two curricula are different. My children will be learning different ways to get the same answer and thus gaining a deeper understanding of how the number system works.

For more challenge, I cannot say enough good things about Glenn Ellison’s Hard Math for Elementary Students. It’s best if you get the textbook, workbook, and solutions (3 books). We’ve had DC1 go through the workbook twice over a 3 year period with a break in between. We’ve also done a few of the Zaccaro challenge books and they’re ok, but they’re not as good. We never finished going through the Flashkids Math for the Gifted Student books I got, so I can’t recommend them at all. Sometime next week we’ll start Hard Math for Middle School Students which finally has a workbook to go with the textbook (solutions without hints are in the back of the workbook, so there’s no separate solutions book).

For just plain deep and sideways math fun (without workbooks) get used copies of Martin Gardner’s Aha! and Gotcha! They’re even better than Math for Smarty Pants. Family Math is popular for younger kids (we have it but nobody really got into it, but lots of people recommend it).

I don’t have as many recommendations for workbooks outside of math, so I look forward to people’s suggestions. We are going through Spectrum Writing Grade 7, but that’s more of a remedial thing than acceleration or depth. We like it.

Online

Just like with Workbooks, you can go accelerated vs. deep/sideways with online programs.

Khan Academy is the easiest way to accelerate (or review!). It is also a popular way for teachers to deal with kids who get their work done early. DC1 finished K-8 math in Paradise as a 5th grader (though they have since added some sections). I would say zie didn’t really master 7th and 8th grade math via Khan Academy, but it did help DC1 skip 6th grade math by passing the relevant exam when zie got back to where we normally live.

Some schools will also have access to a fun (but expensive) program called ST Math that lets kids go sideways or deep on math. I’m not sure it’s worth buying yourself for $200 for a one-year subscription (though there are discounts available online for home schoolers), but maybe.

Your school may have purchased other online programs that you can access from home– they’re worth checking out.

Less expensive and just as fun (though not as extensive) are Dragon Box products. We loved Dragon Box Algebra and Dragon Box Geometry (called Elements). Even DC2 (almost age 5) can do some of the earlier puzzles. These are well worth the $5-$8 they cost as apps. (I stayed up late one night finishing up Elements myself– it was pretty addicting.)

Reading

There are lots of great books for kids, fiction and non-fiction. Kids can also enjoy some books for grownups.

Each day: 1 page hard math workbook, 1 page writing workbook, 15 min piano, 30 min violin (it had been 15 min violin, but his violin teacher insisted on upping it), typing (required class for middle school that can be taken over the summer, finished last weekend), Stata (finished the basics last weekend), 1 hour video games (optional), rest of the time is free unless zie is needed for household chores. On weekends there is unlimited video game time. Zie has been spending free time reading, creating games, modifying already existing games, playing games, and writing.

Each day: 5 min piano practicing, on weekends and when zie requests it or is bouncing off the walls 1 page Singapore math and 2 pages Brainquest (1 math, 1 reading or science or social studies) either from the regular book or the summer book. Zie has been spending free time reading, playing with toys, doing The Magic School Bus science kit with DH, playing games, watching shows on amazon.

I was a bit surprised when I googled “how to keep a gifted kid challenged” how little concrete advice there was in the first couple of pages of results. The advice that is there seems to be pretty contradictory (praise vs. don’t praise, let them decide vs. remember you’re the grown-up, etc. etc. etc.). So, grumpy nation, I’m asking you, what concrete recommendations do you have for keeping a gifted kid challenged? Any specific programs, books, materials? What did you do as a kid? What do you do for your kids (if applicable)?

Our LO is in Montessori but started early so she will do the 3 years before she’d be eligible for K. (3rd year Montessori is K). I’m intrigued about having her skip a grade and start in 1st at 5. What are factors to look for about being ready to skip, any particular grade better to skip or not, etc etc?

You may want to find the Iowa Acceleration Scale. Here’s Hoagie’s gifted talking about it. It basically provides questions that will help you think about what’s important in terms of skipping vs. not skipping. For example, if your family is really really into sports, then skipping isn’t as good an idea as if you’re ok with your kid not being the star athlete at school. It’s a bit pricey and may not be useful without having taken concurrent IQ tests, so it might be worthwhile just to read up about the general ideas it covers online without actually getting a number. (But if you want to do testing, that works too!)

It sounds like in your LO’s case, that your child will not actually be skipping K– she will be getting K at Montessori, which is pretty common (something my sister did back in the day!). So basically you’re asking if she should do K a second time in public school after having done it at Montessori.

I would look into what K is in your state. If you’re on the core, then they’re going to expect more than if you’re in a state that doesn’t require K, doesn’t have full-time K, or is in one of the states that refused to go on the core. For schools on the core, you’ll want to make sure that your LO has mastered the K skillset, which may include reading and simple arithmetic.

IIRC, you’re in a state in which K is mainly for all the kids who didn’t go to preschool to learn how to play nicely with others and reading isn’t really tackled until 1st grade. (Though your individual school district may vary. Definitely check the K learning objectives for your district for the year.) Given that your child went to preschool, I would be very tempted to skip out. Unless, of course, you’re in a situation like ours in which you want to do the dual-language option and you have to start at K.

This website discusses details and research about acceleration. One of the things it mentions is that they recommend not skipping the year before starting at a new school. So if your elementary school is K-4, they recommend not skipping 4th grade. I’m not sure how big a deal this is in practice, since kids get moved around from schools because of their parents’ jobs all the time. But maybe it matters in marginal cases.

We chose acceleration for DC1 because zie was bored and starting to act out and hir preschool had run out of materials and was suggesting that the entire next year DC1 would act as a teacher’s aide. Zie had already mastered all the K skills (except cutting, but zie mastered cutting in the summer before K). Our private school tested hir and suggested to us doing K and 1st concurrently. That worked out quite well, though in retrospect, zie probably didn’t need the K at all.

So, I guess I would think about the following:

Was the LO in preschool? If yes, then that aspect of K is unnecessary. Zie knows how to line up and listen to the teacher etc.

Has the LO mastered the skillset that will be taught in K? This will vary by your LO, the preschool, and the school district. If not, then there’s less value to skipping K because there’s less chance the LO will be bored in K.

All that other stuff on the Iowa Acceleration scale like sports and siblings and so on.

There are a lot of misconceptions people have about grade skipping– there are plenty of reasons not to skip for most kids, but for kids who can skip, the things random “helpful” people will suggest to you are just not real concerns. So… I would not worry about your LO’s size. DC1 has skipped two grades and has still not been the smallest kid in hir grade in public school even though zie is of exactly average height. People also have been pretty nice to hir– hir social experience has been very different than mine was and has been much more like my experience in my single-subject skipped math classes. I would also not worry about drivers licenses etc. The trend right now is for kids to put off driving until they’re much older than 16.

In general, it’s easier to start out in 1st and say you’re trying it out and then drop back to K midyear than it is to start out in K and do a mid-year skip up to 1st.

In general, I’m very pro-skipping for kids who have mastered the material prior to the year starting. For kids who have mastered most, but not all, of the material, it is going to depend on more stuff, like how much they act out when they get bored, how quickly they can pick up what they’ve missed, and so on.

For our kids, we’re still taking it a year at a time.

Update: Before another person posts about grade skipping being bad based on one anecdote for which they do not know the counterfactual (note: research suggests that on average, the counterfactual would have been worse!), please read this post here.

It is legal in the US for kids under the age of 14 to work if it is for the family business. Even when they’re older, it is legal for them to work for less than minimum wage if it is for the family business. Labor laws don’t apply the same way when your employer is a parent. (Note and disclaimer: consult a lawyer/do your own research before making employment decisions.)

When I was younger (including when I was on break from college and an experienced grader!) I used to offer to help grade my mom’s stacks of homeworks for free. She would never let me, even when it was just multiple choice and required no specialized knowledge to mark. I was never really sure why she wouldn’t.

I have friends whose parents are famous economists who learned Stata practically in the cradle. These skills came in handy when they were old enough for paying work as students and then later when their humanities degrees didn’t really pan out and they needed to change fields. Data analysis is a valuable skill.

DC1 has played around with programming in Python and likes building things in minecraft. Zie has also done some Scratch and some lego-robot programming. This summer I suggested zie might like to try a little Stata and zie said that sounded fun. We’ve done about three hours now (1 hour of showing how excel works using our mortgage spreadsheet and 2 hours of creating a numeric variable from a text variable from an incomplete but already created .do file) and zie seems to be enjoying it. Once we’re done with the variable generation (that I actually do need for my work and would normally have an RA do but they’re all off for a week), we’ll start going through A Gentle Introduction to Stata. Right now I’m paying $7.50/hour which is much more than zie gets for hir allowance.

Zie is mostly booked all summer with summer camps and a keyboarding class and books and sleepovers and games and traveling and so on. But there are a few days free here and there, so we’ll put in a little Stata training on those days, and if I have scut work to do and no RA to do them, zie will be able to help out if zie stays interested. Especially if I’m out of Here to Make Friends podcasts to listen to while copy/pasting.

Did you ever help your parents with their work? Did they pay you? Would you let your children help? Why or why not?